Winston Mardis says the liquor control commission’s Serving Alcohol to Minors program was designed to stop underage drinking. The city sends minors into bars, hoping to bust anyone who will serve them. In 1993, the program’s first year, 56 percent of all liquor licensees tested were caught selling to minors. Last year, that figure was […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 52
Issue of Oct. 1 – 7, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar Sidebar
Chicago photographer John Mahtesian finds art in the humble daily routines of such people as shop girls and schoolchildren. About 20 of Mahtesian’s black-and-white photographs, taken in Russia, Ireland, Armenia, England, and Italy, as well as Chicago, are on view in “John Mahtesian: The Roving Eye” at the Evanston Art Center, 2603 Sheridan in Evanston, […]
Posted inMusic
David S. Ware Quartet
DAVID S. WARE QUARTET It’s too early to tell if the recent signing of free-jazz titan David S. Ware to Columbia Records is a harbinger of the music’s popular elevation or just an anomaly. The imprimatur of Branford Marsalis, who made Ware his first acquisition as Columbia’s creative consultant, will doubtlessly garner the tenor saxophonist […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Not Quite Cricket/ Maris’s Black Mark
By Michael Miner Not Quite Cricket Europeans, like people everywhere, read foreign news for assurance that the world is behaving as always. Wars are being fought where they belong, while the places you might visit next summer are keeping up their eccentricities. Bill and Hillary and Ken and Monica hold Europeans spellbound; but because they […]
Posted inMusic
Real Deal
Snoop Dogg Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told (No Limit/Priority) By Franklin Soults When Public Enemy’s Chuck D called hip-hop the black CNN, he hit on a metaphor whose meaning could be appreciated by anyone with even a passing interest in rap. And yet so many hard-core hip-hop fans seem not […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In an August issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers from the United States and France announced that aspirin blocks “pain” receptors in plants in much the same way that it blocks them in animals. However, it also suppresses a distress signal that causes neighboring plants to produce a defensive, sour-tasting chemical […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Underground
Underground, Rhinoceros Theater Festival, at the Lunar Cabaret. The protagonist of Abby Sher’s play is out to fight not City Hall but the U.S. Post Office–and all because a clerk refused to refund the money he claims a stamp machine stole from him. His actual retaliation is as petty as his loss, but obsession with […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kwaidan: Three Japanese Ghost Stories
Kwaidan: Three Japanese Ghost Stories Like fellow experimental director Robert Wilson, Ping Chong is a master at creating big, beautiful, often enigmatic tableaux: angels kicking through a field of feathers, Asian teenagers jitterbugging, a 16th-century Dutch trader and a Japanese court official sitting cross-legged at opposite sides of the stage trying to converse. But unlike […]
Posted inMusic
Spider Saloff
SPIDER SALOFF Spider Saloff likes to dip a toe in jazz, keeping her rhythms relatively limber and indulging in an occasional scat chorus. But she remains primarily a cabaret singer–in fact, the best cabaret singer gigging regularly in Chicago. In mid-September she warmed up for her current three-week engagement–and closed out the first century AG […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rhinoceros Theater Festival
Rhinoceros Theater Festival This annual showcase of experimental theater, performance, and music from Chicago’s fringe takes its name from surrealist painter Salvador Dali’s use of the term “rhinocerontic” (it means real big). The Rhinoceros Theater Festival runs through October 17 at the Lunar Cabaret, 2827 N. Lincoln, 773-327-6666. Consult the listings below for specific shows […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bracing for the battle of Uptown
For 26 years Peter Florakos has been grilling meat and serving up Old Style at the Best Steak House, located at Wilson and Broadway, the epicenter of Uptown. Despite a spotless record with the liquor commission, however, Florakos could be forced to close if newer residents of the 32nd Precinct pass a vote-dry initiative. “These […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Laughs of Steel…
LAUGHS OF STEEL…A workout for your diaphragm, Rhinoceros Theater Festival, at the Lunar Cabaret. You’ve got to have something to offer if you’re going to wade into the crowded pool of autobiographical solo performance in Chicago. Dana Block in her one-woman show Laughs of Steel shows she’s got the writer’s chops at least to be […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Restaurant Tours: a good steak is no longer rare
About a dozen years ago a national barbecue chain called Tony Roma’s opened in Chicago and was quickly laughed out of town. Nobody muscles in on our rib joints. Steaks are another story. In 1980 the Palm, a New York-based chain, took root in this once-impregnable bastion of beef. Shuttered for 14 months when the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
River North Dance Company
River North Dance Company River North achieves a remarkable range within its rather narrowly defined niche. Traditionally a jazz-dance company performing short, entertaining works, it nevertheless offers a variety of styles and moods, partly because it taps a variety of choreographers. The troupe’s Dance Chicago ’98 program alone showcases such widely divergent work as Randy […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Big People Little People
BIG PEOPLE LITTLE PEOPLE, at Victory Gardens Theater. Early in her one-woman show, Sally Edwards–homemaker and mother of three–tells us she thinks she’s been spending too much time with her “little people.” She’s right. But that isn’t what’s wrong with Big People Little People; in fact, her strongest material has to do with “mommy anomie,” […]